Being trans over the last few months in particular has been extremely exhausting, with attempts to legislate us out of existence abroad, sham healthcare inquiries, and a looming moral panic back home. But, even as I am hit with yet another TERF yelling on my feed, I can’t help but notice something: much of this hysteria is directed towards trans women and femmes, with the occasional grifter kicking up a stink about nonbinary people in the mix, yet the panic reserved for trans men is built upon one very specific character: young ‘girls’ somehow being forced by Big T (Transgenderism) to mutilate their bodies and forsake some preconceived vision of a feminine future.
To the average right wing pundit, it is impossible to believe that a person who was born a ‘woman’ would choose to undergo any form of healthcare that might be masculinising. If I, a fully grown adult, elected to undergo testosterone replacement therapy in order to feel more comfortable there is no explanation that the political right could surmise, in which I did so of my own volition. Whilst this might seem odd at first glance, when one considers what the right perceives as female, this surprise is immediately quashed. This perception isn’t just that the female body does not deserve autonomy, it is that there is simply no way that someone who is categorised as female can make the decision for themselves. The ‘female’ must be coddled, protected from all bad influences and slowly coaxed into what is perceived as ‘natural’ — presumably marriage or motherhood.
This narrative of coercion fits nicely into many of the detrans grifters of today, with many spreading misinformation about trans healthcare based upon the fact that they were somehow tricked into transitioning medically. Now, of course, having experienced this system myself, I know that it operates based upon an informed consent model. Providers often take the time to talk to patients about what it is that they want, as well as answering any questions about side effects — just like any other medical procedure. But, because of who is making the decisions — those of us who are presumed as female — it’s not believed that we would make decisions to alter the very core of our being.
However, it goes even further than that, where even the idea of the trans man is simply not a possibility. Much of the bigotry aimed at trans women centres around a caricature of the trans woman. She is a sex pest, a predator who wishes to attack people in toilets and steal your daughters’ baccarat trophies because her manly man thighs give her some advantage (or whatever the hell the mould in J. K. Rowling’s walls is saying these days). But no such vision exists of the trans man — he is nothing, and the closest thing to him is a girl that has been forced to have her body pumped full of hormones by doctors who want to make a quick buck off of her feminine self-hatred.
Because fundamentally, what the transphobe views the female as is: a commodity, a constraint, a constant, with a fundamental set of roles, which necessitate reproduction. Nothing can exist, does exist, should exist, outside that — and thus, no vision of the trans man exists. It is why there is such a hyperfixation on breast tissue, because it exists not as something that has been misplaced upon a body, but something that exists solely for others. My body is not for me, but for a supposed future child that — according to those who do not believe in my existence — I have repressed my desire for. But, much of that also hinges on something else entirely, something much more material.
It doesn’t take a PhD in queer theory to figure out that the character of the detransitioner as created by the right, often has white skin. The obsession with trans men being seduced by this supposed Transgender Craze is, as well put by my favourite creator for introspective people, Kat Blaque:
“…They could have become a viable mother for a white child…”
It is these racial and misogynist undertones that fuel this panic. Grifters and ‘concerned citizens’ seek not to protect people from supposed injustices, but to put us in our place. When stripped bare, the panic about trans men is just as much built upon sexism as it is transphobia. For trans men, this is based on the assumption that, for one reason or another, we simply cannot do something with our own bodies. To do so would be to forsake what is demanded more and more by a racist patriarchy. With some of the greatest figureheads of the anti-trans movement saying the quiet part out loud, it is clear that first and foremost to these people, my body is not mine.
This is not to say that this is the most important issue facing trans people at the moment — but it does illustrate an element of the moral panic which currently exists. The fear of the transmasculine is one greater part of the crumbling hegemony that only favours the few.By writing about this, I hope to expose the right’s view of bodily autonomy, trans men, and thus, women as a whole. First and foremost, it is a moral panic about bodily autonomy, and thus, medical transition is the ultimate rejection of social expectation, and reveals just how insidious the right’s view of the body really is.
